The power of regional investigative reporting

We have good news about the news business to share. Our work makes a difference!

InvestigateWest's groundbreaking story on the hazards of chemotherapy exposure for health care workers has resulted in the passage of two laws improving worker safety in Washington state, signed by Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire in April. One of the laws establishes an occupational cancer registry in the state, and the other regulates better regulates toxic compounds, including chemo drugs, in the workplace. That story first appeared on our web site, on msnbc.com, The Seattle Times and in a documentary we co-produced with KCTS 9.

In addition, a measure banning toxic pavement sealants also was signed into law by the governor. That effort came after InvestigateWest wrote about the issue just over a year ago. With the governor's signature, Washington state became the first state in the nation to ban the sealants, joining a handful of smaller governments across the nation that have taken similar steps. That work appeared on our web site and on msnbc.com.

That's direct, important change because of the work of InvestigateWest journalists. And that's an amazing record for any news organization, particularly a new, nonprofit news organization! Since our launch two years ago, our work has appeared in a variety of regional and national news organizations, including public radio and television, commercial television, regional newspapers, national and regional online news sites, ethnic media and more.

Our journalists are veterans, with established, award-winning records. InvestigateWest was founded with the closure of the print Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and is dedicated to public-service journalism that makes a difference. Judging by these results, it's working!

We also convened a community conversation in March about stormwater, the biggest pollution threat to Puget Sound, by co-hosting a public forum and panel discussion in Olympia. We gathered more than 70 people in a standing-room-only lunchroom crowd in Olympia for the discussion, co-sponsored by the Washington Policy Center, a conservative think tank, and the Sightline Institute, a liberal think tank.

"We saw it as a great opportunity for two think tanks from the opposite sides of the table to have a discussion on stormwater," Brandon Housekeeper, an environmental-policy analyst with the Washington Policy Center, told The Olympian newspaper, which covered the session. "The discussion isn't meant to move legislation in one direction or another."

We're excited that our work brings needed change and civic debate, and we appreciate your support helping us do this important journalism!

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March 2015 marks the anniversary of a bold promise: King County's 10-year plan to end homelessness. Now that the 10-year plan is ending and local homelessness is worse than ever, talk of ending homelessness is being replaced with less-lofty aspirations: making homelessness rare and brief when it does occur.

In collaboration with KUOW this week, we examine the roots of the plan, the challenges it faced, and where community and city leaders think we go from here.

With grand jury reform elsewhere focused on eliminating racial bias and curbing police use of force, Oregon is an outlier: It is one of just 14 states that do not regularly record the citizen grand juries that charge people with felonies.

Almost five years after police killed an unarmed black man in Portland and the Multnomah Co. district attorney petitioned for that grand jury to be recorded, lawmakers in Salem are lining up behind a reform bill to mandate recording statewide, InvestigateWest has learned.

"Everyone is aware that passing a $15 an hour minimum wage was historic," an advisor to Mayor Ed Murray and the Seattle City Council told InvestigateWest. "But if we cannot enforce that, we haven't accomplished much."

Based on a review of more than 20,000 wage theft complaints, hundreds of pages of reports and more than a dozen interviews, "Stolen Wages" shines a light on the dark world of pay violations in Seattle and across Washington.

Portable, modular or relocatable classrooms — whatever you call them — are a necessity for cash-strapped schools.

But many portables become permanent fixtures, in place for decades at a time. Costly and insufficient, these aging structures burden the grid, frustrate teachers and administrators and compromise student health.

Energizing our world with wood sounds so natural. And it has quickly become a multibillion-dollar industry as governments including British Columbia and the European Union turn to biomass to replace dirty old coal. Yet what we found when we dug into the coal-vs.-wood debate will surprise you.